Capture Your Analog Notes, Digitally With Evernote

Evernote has been a part of my life for some time now. I can’t exactly remember when I first signed up for the service, but I know that it has been for more than just a few years. I’ve used it on my iPhones, iPads, Android phones/tablets, and on my laptop computers. Sometimes, I’ll leave the service, and use something else, but I usually end up coming back to it in the end. Note taking applications are something that I am absolutely addicted to, and I will give everything a shot no matter what, but Evernote is always installed on my devices as my backup.

Another one of my addictions are to notebooks. Last week, I ordered my first set of Field Notes notebooks, but I have always been attached to Moleskine notebooks for everything. I have tons of these laying around my room, and they are always in a place for me to pick up and jot down notes if I need to. I also carry one with me in my computer bag wherever I go. When I first heard about these Moleskine Evernote Smart Notebooks, I was intrigued, but I wasn’t sure how I felt about having everything that I wrote down, digitally available. The concept is great, having the ability to easily search anything you’ve written down in a notebook, why wouldn’t I love it? I still had my questions and doubts, but I’ve finally broken down and picked one of these Moleskine Evernote Smart Notebooks, and I’m here to give you my thoughts today.

Moleskine Evernote Smart Notebook

Perfectly wrapped in plastic, the Evernote Smart Notebook by Moleskine has the Evernote elephant centered in the middle of the cover, with all different images circling the Evernote elephant. Something that I love when it comes to some of the Moleskine notebooks, in regards to the fact that there is an elastic band that wraps around the book, so that it doesn’t accidentally come open. Well the elastic band and bookmark holder on this Evernote notebook, are Evernote green, which adds a nice touch to the ensemble. Inside the notebook, you get 192 pages, with the first page being where you put some type of contact information, if you happen to lose the notebook. After flipping through the 192 blank, college-ruled pages, the back page of the Evernote smart notebook, gives you instructions on how to use this notebook in unison with the Evernote app, as well as giving you a three month subscription to Evernote Premium. The back cover has a little pocket where the sticker labels reside. We’ll get into those in a little bit.

Evernote Labels

I highly recommend creating your Evernote account before starting to take snapshots to add to your Evernote notes. That way, it makes the transition a little bit easier when using the Evernote notebook to it’s full potential. After making your first note, whether it’s a to-do list, or a note about anything, then we can get into the fun a little bit. The label stickers each mean something different. You get a total of four different sticker sheets, with two of those sheets being the a little bit different than the others. At the bottom of each sheet, are large, vibrant pink, arrows. These are for when you need to point something out specifically within whatever note you are taking, or if you’re drawing something, so that you pay attention specifically to it. On one sheet, you have check marks, airplanes, and home stickers. On the other sheet, you have x’s lightning bolts, and office buildings.

The various stickers have obvious labels to them, but the nice thing about these, are that they are customizable from within the Evernote application. The checkmark is for ideas or images that have been approved. The airplane is for travel, and the house sticker is for things you need to do at your home, obviously. The “X” sticker is for ideas that were rejected, and the lightning bolt is for tasks or notes that require you to take some type of action. Finally the office building sticker is for tasks or notes that are for work.

In order to customize each sticker, you have to follow the steps below:

Tap your name at the top of the application

Select General

Camera

Moleskine Notebook

Select which tag you would like to change

Save

Importing To The Evernote Application

Now in order to get these notes that you write in the Evernote smart notebook, into the app itself, simply open the app, tap on camera, then slide over to Document, and the Evernote app will automatically recognize that you are using the Smart Notebook. Once you’ve taken the picture, you will see which tags have popped up, and a new entry will be input into the Evernote application, for your records. While I haven’t used this for months, I’ve only used it for about a week or so, having this Evernote Smart Notebook from Moleskine will definitely help me keep track of everything that I write down. I also am sure that the stickers will quickly be used up, as I take notes on just about everything, from work to TechDissected ideas, and home chores.

Conclusion

Evernote and Moleskine offer four different types of smart notebooks, two pocket sized notebooks, and two large notebooks. If you don’t want to have lined paper, you can also choose to have squared paper, which is just like graph paper. Some people prefer the lined, others prefer the graph paper, so Moleskine and Evernote cater to every need. The prices for these two notebooks are $24.99 for the pocket notebook, and $29.99 for the large notebook, and are available along with other products that Moleskine and Evernote have partnered up for.

Contest

Now for the fun part. With the Evernote Smart Notebook, you get a three month subscription to Evernote Premium. Evernote Premium adds a lot of useful features to the Evernote experience, including the amount of storage you can have on your account, offline notebooks, passcode lock, among others. I’ve had Evernote Premium since last fall, and will have it for awhile, which gives TechDissected the opportunity to giveaway the 3-month subscription to one lucky winner. In order for your chance to win, leave a comment below about how you use Evernote and you will instantly be entered to win.

About Author

I'm a lover of all things technology, which happens to work perfectly with the ideology behind TechDissected. I currently carry an iPhone 6 and an HTC One M8. I also have the iPad Air, iPad Mini with Retina, and a 2010 15" MacBook Pro. They say that I may or may not be the Apple "guy" around here. My life is an open book, but beware, I don't back down from a sports discussion, EVER.

This is all great, but what is the point of having this special “Smart Notebook”. What is wrong with doing this with any book you currently own? Just buy the stickers (If you are partial to them) and stick them onto any notebook page. Would that work? If you aren’t a fan of the stickers, couldn’t you just take a picture of any written note and manually categorize it. Or even better, leave it categorized?

The only way I would see a “Smart Notebook” as a possible purchase is that if the notebook translated your handwriting to typed text and imported that into an online notes service, but I know that we are a long way away from that being a reality.

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